Trailers containing millions Sheriff’s records obtained by WIRED show that dollars worth of Tesla car and home batteries have allegedly been stolen directly from loading docks at the company’s Nevada facilities at least 11 times since last December.
“It’s an epidemic right now,” says Storey County Sheriff’s Detective Sam Hatley, who is investigating Tesla.
Three men suspected of committing one of the robberies they were arrested in January, he was charged with illegal possession of stolen property. However, the broader wave of cargo thefts plaguing Elon Musk’s car company is still under investigation and has not been previously reported.
Hatley tells WIRED that the events documented in sheriff’s records only reflect part of the problem. Investigators are tracking a total of 17 alleged cargo thefts involving Tesla and other companies in Storey County this year, although Hatley would not say how many of them specifically involved the automaker. One of the alleged operations targeting Tesla also hit the battery recycling company Redwood Materials. Hatley adds that these numbers may still be underestimates because companies are sometimes reluctant to disclose that their products have been stolen.
Transport industry researchers estimated last year that U.S. package theft roughly doubled between 2022 and 2024 and now costs companies a total of nearly $18 million a day, which could likely translate into higher prices for buyers. The electronic components stayed frequent targetaccording to theft prevention consultancy Verisk CargoNet.
What is particularly concerning to law enforcement and the cargo industry is the raise in so-called strategic thefts that Tesla has allegedly experienced. These operations do not include thieves stealing goods from a trailer left unattended at a public bus stop. Instead, organized groups have found ways to exploit loopholes in security protocols at the world’s most valuable automaker, including the apply of fraudulent IDs and the loose relationships the company maintains with the truck drivers who transport its products.
WIRED learned about these incidents by requesting records of emergency shipments from Storey County, where Tesla’s battery plant employs about 12,000 people, making it by far the largest employer in the area. About 2 percent of the county’s emergency incidents last year occurred at the 5.4 million-square-foot so-called gigafactory that Tesla operates in partnership with Panasonic. (However, a significant number of calls seem to be like this ass dials 911.)
Tesla’s deputy manager told investigators that some of the early thefts resulted from failure to follow basic safety protocols, according to sheriff’s reports. Sheriff’s records show the automaker has since tightened its procedures, including beginning to verify drivers’ identities at the factory gate. “It definitely helps,” Hatley says. Thefts “occur, but not in such large numbers.”
Tesla, the deputy manager named in the reports, and Redwood Materials did not respond to requests for comment.
Powerwall theft
The first recent case occurred in December and involved two trailers, each filled with more than $475,000 worth of Powerwall 3 residential battery systems, that sheriff’s reports said were taken from Tesla’s property by a suspected logistics carrier. Authorities recovered the empty trailers about 500 miles away in Southern California.
Tesla’s security team later found some Powerwalls for sale online and notified authorities. According to investigators, the products cannot be activated once they are marked as stolen, so there is little to gain from purchasing them. In another case, an auto parts retailer in Northern California told Tesla and law enforcement that someone had offered to sell them allegedly stolen car batteries at a discount, which investigators later confirmed.
Tesla reported one additional alleged theft in December and nine more in January. This includes an incident on January 19 involving another trailer containing 123 Powerwalls. It was supposed to go to Tesla’s factory in Hayward, California, but it never got there. Sheriff’s reports show neither the semi nor the company whose driver came to pick up the trailer were licensed to operate interstate. Sheriff’s reports indicate that a freight broker awarded a trailer transport contract to an illegal carrier.